So I just read my first article that was against recycling and my world has been turned topsy turvy. That's right. Up until now I had only looked to recycling from an environmentalist perspective and I LOVED IT. But now...I'm viewing it as an economist. AH!!!
This is the article,
Recycling is Garbage by John Tierney.
While I would encourage you to read it yourself (took me about 30 min) I have included four highlights:
Quote one: "Every week," Dittersdorf said, "75,000 trees are cut to make the Sunday New York Times." The children were appalled. A few glanced reproachfully at me sitting in the back of the
room. I didn't try to justify my -- or your -- role in this weekly tree-slaying, garbage-
generating, earth-defiling ritual.The children were in no mood for heresy.
This is when the NYT journalist was giving an example from when he observed a classroom's 'Three R's" example lesson. I thought the way he portrayed the children's resentment hilarious! To think, a journalist getting beat up by 30 little third graders. hehe...
Quote Two: Chaz Miller, a contributing editor for Recycling Times, a trade newspaper. "There's been a messianic zeal that's hurt the cause. The American public loves recycling, but we have to
do it efficiently. It should be a business, not a religion."
This is also how I kinda used to look at it, with the zeal only an environmentalist could have. But now they are applying to my allegedly more rational economist side!? So what is my opinion on the matter? I think I'll take to heart the idea that recycling is necessary, but it has to be done efficiently. In the article it states that on a local government level, there are many systems of recycling that work at an economically efficient level. But what makes or breaks a system is the fact that each one is adapted to the municipality that it is in. New York's system of recycling needs to be inherently different from Paris, North Dakota. We can't just have one solve-all-problems system across the board (or in this case the federal government...) and that's why we have state governments. We've got to use them!
Quote Three: When consumers follow their preferences, they are guided by the simplest, and often the best, measure of a product's environmental impact: its price.
Ah, the true words of an economist. Tierney is actually quoting one right here! So yeah, they introduce the idea that people should have to pay for the disposal of their own trash and I thought to myself...yeah...that could work. I've seen pictures of pre-government trash collecting and they look pretty raunchy...but now that people have had a taste for clean streets maybe it'll work.
Quote Four: Many environmentalists trust government regulations more than market forces.
Ew. I hate government regulations. They are useful, yes, but often inefficient. I LOVE market forces! Enough said, my economist side won out on this side. But as always, one should never rule out the other option when making policies cause then you might miss the best course of action...
So I hope this was thought provoking. It was for me. I never thought recycling could be bad...and though I don't go into the detail the article does...I find I still want the good feeling I get when I put an empty gallon of milk into my homes yellow recycling bin that now costs more than I thought it did. Lucky for me recycling is inelastic :D
